MAYOR: WE’RE OPEN FOR BUSINESS

Rick Gibbs’ top priority this year is to generate more jobs in the city

There are some very specific things that Rick Gibbs would like to see accomplished during his one-year term as the mayor of Murrieta.

Gibbs said he wants the city to progress with planning on the Second Street Park and the procurement of federal funds to help pay for the project that will extend Clinton Keith Road to Winchester Road.

He also expects to oversee the opening of the city’s Teen Center and the installation of two synthetic turf fields at the Los Alamos Hills Sports Park.

And, of course, public safety is always a priority in a city that was ranked the fifth-safest in the United States, among those with more than 100,000 residents, by the FBI in its 2011 crime report. Gibbs said that working with the police force to maintain that lofty standing in the face of budget and personnel cutbacks is another major item on his 2013 agenda.

But Gibbs has made it clear in a handful of recent speeches that his No. 1 priority for 2013 is economic development.

The city of 105,000 has a mean household income of $100,000. The average age is 32, and 34 percent of adults hold college degrees.

Gibbs said he thinks the city has to do everything in its power to generate more local jobs. He added that two-thirds of those young, well-educated, relatively affluent people have to leave town for work.

“So you put that all together, and the thing that we’re really trying to do is provide jobs, good jobs, in the local area,” he said.

Gibbs, whose term as mayor runs through January, concedes that the city’s economic development efforts are not as easy to track as the building of a road or the completion of a teen center. But he thinks it’s absolutely critical to the city’s future to pursue EB5 projects, in which foreign developers are given green cards if they undertake a project in the U.S. that will create jobs, and seek direct foreign investment in Murrieta.

Those were his primary objectives when he left April 4 for a two-week trip to China.

City officials have long maintained that securing domestic funding for development projects has been difficult, and remains difficult. Gibbs, a former Air Force pilot who spent a lot of time overseas during his career as an aerospace executive, said tapping overseas funding sources just makes sense, considering the current lending climate among domestic banks.

“When you ask anybody who’s a developer, or trying to build a new project, ‘Have you gotten any bank loans lately?’ the answer is ‘No,’” Gibbs said. “While there’s money to lend, it must be tough to get.

“So EB5 is a valuable source of funding for folks who would like to build businesses or grow businesses in Murrieta.”

Jackie Fenaroli, a Murrieta resident and small-business owner, said city officials should let the free market do what it does best, and get out of the way.

“Our particular city council, and especially Rick Gibbs, have fallen into the policy of central planning,” she said.

Chris Kuran takes a different view. The president of Waterstone Faucets in Murrieta said he worked closely with the city in recent years as the company looked to expand its operation in Murrieta. Kuran said they eventually were able to move from a 13,000-square-foot facility that it had outgrown into a 42,000-square-foot facility right next door.

“He just connects really well and he understands what we’re going through as manufacturers,” Kuran said. “So he’s sympathetic to the issues we have to deal with, and he understands what we need in the local area.”